When Fall Arrives With Rain, Clown Shoes, and Old Memories

Fall may not officially start until the calendar says so, but Jean’s campus has already decided it’s autumn — and it’s bringing rain, acorns, and footwear dilemmas worthy of their own sitcom. This post begins with her trying to keep her clown‑sized “medical” shoes dry on the way to a Mahjong mixer meeting, then somehow detours into hydrangeas that look like prowlers and memories of actual window peepers from decades past. It’s part seasonal update, part true‑crime‑lite, part “why is life like this,” all told with Jean’s trademark ability to laugh at the absurdity of her own First World Problems…. AI

The official start of fall in the Northern Hemisphere is September 22nd at 8:04 EDT which is the day before this post goes public. Rain is coming down hard and fast as I sit here at my computer. Normally I wouldn’t care but today I have to go to our sister campus to play a game of two of Mahjong with two of their residents as we hammer out the details to a Mixer we’re have in October. It was my brain child three years ago to have a yearly tournament and now it’s my brain child to switch the tournament to a mixer. A mixer will be less pressure on some of the old souls I live with who freak out over taking part in a formal competition. In past years I coddled and coerced them into competing. This year I don’t have the emotional bandwidth to herd anxious seniors like caffeinated cats.

Anyway, back to the rain. As I said, normally I wouldn’t care if I have to walk across a rainy parking lot but I don’t like the idea of getting my new, wide-ass shoes wet—the ones I bought because I needed extra room for the dressing the wound center is having me wear 24/7. (When I walk in them, I feel like I should be handing out balloon animals.) Normally on raining days I’d wear one of my older pairs of tennis shoes but my foot doesn’t fit in them in its present state. Oh, my God, these First World Problems will be the death of me. I should be grateful I have shoes in the first place and in the second place would it really be so bad if I got my new clown shoes wet? I call them my clown shoes because that’s the way my non-bandaged foot feels like when I walk in them. Grace may be one of my favorite words but it sure doesn’t describe how I move these days. Who am I kidding? Grace has never been a word that would apply to my body movements. I didn’t give up ballet classes because I out-grew my tutu.

Fall is starting to make it’s presence known around our campus. Acorns are falling. Pine cones and black walnuts are on the ground. And the trees across our green space are wearing a tingle of pink here and there as are the hydrangeas on the other side of my window. Those hydrangea blossoms are as big as a man’s head. A few nights ago I mistook one for a window peeper. That brought back a conversation we had at the firepit a few weeks ago when a fellow resident said she asked Management to replace the hydrangeas in front of her window because she kept thinking she had a window peeper. At the time I thought she was being paranoid but now I understand how that could happen. Or did she plant the idea in my subconscious? By the way. She has clout here. The hydrangea outside her window is gone.

Back in my twenties when I lived alone I had a window peeper. My neighbor across the street used to sit on his porch to smoke and every so often he’d call me to tell me someone was peeping in my bedroom window. Then he'd chase the guy but by the time he got around the corner of my next door neighbor’s house there was no sign of which way he went. We finally figured out that my next neighbor and the voyeur were one and the same. He’d just slip in his back door when the man across the street came after him.

I was in grade school when the concept of window peeping first touched my life. My aunt had one several times and it freaked her out to the point she’d call my mom to come over. My older brother and I were too young to be left alone and my dad worked nights so my mom would haul me out of bed and we’d get to my aunts house about the same time as the police. Mom would plop me down on my aunt’s couch like a tiny, pajama‑clad security detail with a blanket and pillow while the grown ups talked in the kitchen.

I never called the police about my Peeping Tom. For some reason it seemed like that would give the guy an extra thrill, knowing I was frighten. Google AI says window peepers do it “mainly out of idle curiosity, nosiness about how others live, or malicious intent such as stalking and voyeurism.” Since I’m still alive to talk about my peeper, I’m guessing, he wasn’t stalking me with malicious intent. But just in case you have the urge to try it, window peeping is a crime in all 50 states. Peeping Tom’s are prosecuted as misdemeanors same as loitering and disorderly conduct with punishments that could include up to six months to a year in jail plus fines. If you use a camera, it’s a felony offense and you could end up as a registered sex-offender.

I’m pretty sure Peeping Toms are quaintly old school now, replaced by internet stalking or visiting blogs and Facebook pages incognito. There’s a strong line, however, between stalking and lurking online. Lurkers are harmless and all bloggers have them. Lurking is defined as “passive observation without interaction, while stalking is a repeated, unwanted pattern of behavior meant to harass, track, or frighten a specific person.” Lurkers rarely let their presence be known where the same can’t be said about stalkers. I had a malicious stalker once but that’s a story for another day. How’s that for a cliffhanger? ©

Crazy Day, Crazy Dream and Baseball Parks

It was one of those days when I was so busy the step counter on my fitness watch was calling out in pain, not to mention my fallen aches were doing the same. It was window washing day at the continuum care facility and that generated three appointments for the project. The first at 7:45 AM and I normally don’t get up that early. That one was for the maintenance man to pop out my screens, then another appointment at 10ish for the guys from window washing company to wash the inside of my windows followed by a 12ish appointment for them to come back to wash the windows on the outside of my deck and to pop the clean screens back over the rest of my newly washed windows. In between all this I had a terrible case of diarrhea and the house cleaning service woman showed up on the wrong day and we had to work that out lest she be cleaning around all the stuff that I had to move out of the way of the windows.

After the three window washers/college kids left my apartment I went over to the cafe, had a half a bowl of soup before a lecture titled 'Quirky Baseball Parks' that started at 1:30. I had just enough time after that ended to go back to my apartment, pick up the Mahjong set and deposit the other half of my soup in the refrigerator. Thankfully, the afternoon was diarrhea-free and I won all three Mahjong games.

The craziness didn’t end there. After Mahjong I had a date with three others to go off campus to a popular bar for dinner. And that came about because their usual fourth for off campus adventures was Ms Manners (who moved out) and I happened to be sitting near-by when they planned their dinner so they asked me if I wanted to come (in her place). I really like all three of these women. One is as crazy about Mahjong as I am, one is my neighbor/a retired psychiatrist and the other was a high school English teacher who has the classy wardrobe on this campus. She’s tall and willowy and she could make a potato sack look like Paris couture. All three are in our Tuesday Dinner Discussion group formally known as the Secret Society of Liberal Ladies. Yes, you’d win a bet if you placed it on us toasting the latest criminal indictment of the former president. Speaking of which, there’s a rumor going around that Trump could be offered a plea deal. In exchange for admitting guilt and agreeing never to run for office again he could avoid a trial and a possible prison sentence. Place your bids, ladies and gentlemen, I’m saying he’ll never go for it. He’ll continue putting the country through his circus of flying monkeys until his tombstone reads: “I won that damn election.” 

After I got home from dinner, I put all my furniture and window decor back in place, lined up clothes and plans for the following day then I felt into bed at midnight for a hard sleep that ended at 3AM with a nightmare. I couldn’t fall back to sleep. Finally after playing a dozen hands of Mahjong online, I went back to bed and by morning it came to me what had caused my nightmare. 

In the dream there was heavy wooden door that I kept trying to close and lock with an old fashioned key but the door kept opening up, over and over again---me slamming it harder each time but each time it would open wider than the before. On the other side of the door were ghost-like figures looking menacing like from the movie, Scream. The door in my nightmare---it finally connected in my conscious mind---looked just like the rustic table top at the bar we’d been to.

At dinner the evening before the nightmare the other ladies were all talking about their divorces and how all their husbands had been alcoholics and abusive. And I revealed a carefully guarded detail about my life: The fact that while my husband and I had been a couple for 42 years we were only married for 12 1/2 of those years but the HUGE secret part that I've never shared on campus is that we didn’t live together until after Don's stroke. We had houses a mile apart and our relationship was complicated, hard to explain without a glass of hard cider in my hand and a growing trust factor that I wouldn't be judged. The English teacher said, “You were ahead of your time. That’s the way young people are doing now.” The secret revealed was the broken lock in the dream that wouldn’t keep the door shut any longer.  

By the way, the lecture about quirky baseball parks was interesting and was given by college professor from a local college who was animated and funny in his delivery. Playing field sizes and shapes were not regulated in the early days, he told us, and that contributed to some of the records set by the stars of their era. Some fields where rectangles, others the size of little league fields today and several had uneven distances between their bases---as much as 50 feet! One even had a hill to climb in the outfield. Babe Ruth fell on the hill and quit playing four days later. In a Chicago park there was a small metal sign in the outfield that read: “Hit this sign and you’ll get a free suit at so-and-so store.” One baseball player hit it seven times and got seven tailor-made suits. 

Wednesday are always Mahjong, lunch and lecture day. Wednesday is my favorite day of the week and in no small part because I get to interact with the blog community. Thank you all for reading and leaving comments here.

Until next Wednesday…. ©

 P.S. I won two of the three Mahjong games we played this afternoon. I really love my Wednesdays.

Causing Unintentional Hurt Feelings

Sunday mornings are always quiet around here. Few things are on our otherwise busy schedule and the church goers flee the place like rats on a sinking ship. Even the dining room has so few reservations it’s always subject to be closed and they’re only open between 9:00 and 1:00 to begin with, to serve breakfast only. I sometimes go on Sundays because if you don’t order the mimosas with your breakfast it’s a pretty cheap day to eat in the fine dinning room. I’ve never had a mimosas in my life but before I die I want to try one while pretending I’m sitting at a table with Carrie Bradshaw, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte---Sex in the City characters in case you're not into pop-cultural icons.

 It takes a good imagination to whip those ladies up in an independent living complex but I keep thinking there are some people living here who could have been prototypes for the TV series characters. There is one lady here who is very much the fashionista that Carrie was but she’d much classier than Carrie could be even on her best day. There is no shortage of fashionistas here but there is only one who is tall and willowy and you have to do a double take to realize she’s old enough to live here. I don’t care how good your clothing is made or how fashion forward it is, if your shoulder stoop and you’re carrying a menopausal belly around that’s what people will see before your fabulous outfit. 

If we have any Samantha’s here they are good at covering up their wild pasts but we do have a Miranda or two who are cynical and angry with the world but caring to their friends. Charlotte’s would be the most common however. Somewhat naive, marriage-mind, preppy looking ladies who may have experienced a bad marriage before finding true love with a man who, like Charlotte, they wouldn’t have given a second look at before their first divorces. Charlotte’s upper class upbringing could be duplicated here too. One woman in particular seemed highly insulted when I asked her what she did for a career before retiring. “I’ve never worked a day in my life,” she boasted. Okay then, I thought and that was the end of any conversations we had that day.

A few weeks later Ms. Never showed up to watch us play Mahjong when we players present were all trying to decide if we should wear masks because three people on campus had just gone into quarantine with Covid. Those in quarantine had all had breakfast together including Ms. Never. I pointed that out to her and asked if she’d been tested. “I’ve had Covid already and they told I couldn’t get it again so I don’t need testing.” I asked her who “they” is and after asking three times she finally answered with a fellow resident's name. “Well,” I replied, “until Kelly shows me here medical degree I’m wearing a mask around you.” Ms. Never actually laughed along with everyone else and we all ended up wearing our masks to play Mahjong.

The next week at Mahjong I managed to put my foot in my mouth and hurt someone’s feelings. Big time. Okay, let me just say that I think she was being very thin skinned but still it was a good reminded that I need to check my sense of humor here. This is what happened: While we were playing I asked the others to give me a minute while I decided if I wanted to pick up a discarded tile or not. Ms. Hurt says, “I suppose we could give you a minute” and without thinking I replied, “Says the queen of hesitation.” The other two players laughed (because she really does take three times as long to play her turn as the rest of us) but she went on and on about how if she’s taking too much time to play she can find something else to do with her time on Wednesdays and how she doesn’t want to play with people who talk about her behind her back. Blah, blah, blah and yadda, yadda, yadda all rolled up together for the next ten minutes. In there some where I apologized a couple of times and tried to explain it was just a joke and the other ladies apologized for laughing. Finally she wore herself out and we played in total silence for a while before I tried to break the ice by saying, “I like it better when we talk while we play.” It worked, we started chatting again but she also started making barbs like "I hope that was fast enough" after she'd discard a tile. When we were packing up the game I apologized again.

Walking back to my building with the woman who got Mahjong on the schedule and taught us all how to play I said, “I hope my joke doesn’t result in Ms. Hurt dropping out of the game. I truly like playing with her but I’ve apologized three times and I don’t know what else to do. She clearly is still nursing a hurt.” Teacher says she and her husband have quick senses of humor, too, that gets them in trouble from time to time. Don’t worry about it. If she doesn't come back, oh well.” I never would have guessed this woman was so thin-skinned but I’m finding out I’m living with some powder puffs. 

And sometimes those powder puffs make me I feel as jaded as Samantha because I’m far more worldly than some of my neighbors. For example, a group of eight of was sitting around one evening and one of the women asked if anyone knew what going commando met and I was the only one who did! They didn't believe the phrase has been around a long time so I looked it up after I got home and found out Joey on the sitcom Friends was the first character on TV to say it (1996) but the term as been around since the '70s made popular by U.S. soldiers fighting in the jungles who would forgo their underpants to increase ventilation to prevent fungal infections. How could a term like that be around for so long and me be the only one out of eight to have heard it before? Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a convent. ©